Aral Sea Refill: Seawater Importation Macroproject

I. Introduction

A comprehensive control strategy to recreate the circa 1960 AD endorheic
Aral Sea is offered which involves regulation of several hydrological factors:
(1) overland pipeline importation of seawater from the Black Sea to the
Caspian Sea; (2) stabilization of the endorheic Caspian Sea's water level
by real-time hydrological management of the freshwater inputs from the Volga
and Ural rivers as well as regulated evaporation in the Garabogaz Aylagy;
(3) overland pipeline conveyance of seawater extracted from the Caspian
Sea and deposited into the Aral Basin. Subsequently, the imported seawater
will be diluted with freshwater inputs conserved in the contributing catchments
located in Central Asia, restoring the Aral Sea to its circa 1960 salinity
(10 g/L) and area (67,000 km2). Seawater imports can be achieved,
at less economic cost, than strictly freshwater imports derived from Siberia's
diverted rivers. Unwanted biotic invasion of the Caspian Sea and renewed
Aral Sea can be prevented by thorough filtration of the pumped fluid. A
successful outcome of the proposed control strategy, "Aral Sea Refill",
will require a UNO observed international treaty-codified unity of the affected
region's participating geopolitical and macro-engineering decision-makers
(Wouters and Dukhovny, 2008). The "Aral Sea Refill" proposal seems especially
timely since 2007-2009 AD is the UNO sanctioned International Year of Planet
Earth: Earth Sciences for Society.

II. Macroproject Proposal
Background Information

Especially after the onset of humankind's Space Age in 1957, the world-public
began to become fully aware of the Aral Sea's reduced area and fluid volume.
Publicized satellite imagery revealed the ongoing drastic geographical changes.
The former seabed, once a submarine seascape, now exposed by the regressing
body of water, became a wind-modified, salt-strewn arid landscape, the Aralkum
Desert. Indeed, the draining event-process took place so rapidly that one
might imagine that artist Barry Flanagan's Hole in the Sea (1969), a hollow
plastic cylinder buried in the beach at Scheveningen, The Netherlands, and
filmed from above while the tide flowed in, was operating! In 1960, the
Aral Sea's level stood at ~53 m above the world-ocean's level – almost
what it was circa 200 AD (Reinhardt et al., 2008) – but, by 2007,
its level had dropped to ~30 m above the world's prevailing ocean level
(Glantz, 2007; Micklin, 2006). Once fed by two historically famous rivers,
the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, the Aral Sea mingled their runoffs in a
contiguous body of water. The extreme post-1950 abstraction of freshwater
from these Central Asian Aral Sea-feeding rivers for ultimate application
on mismanaged farmland irrigation mega-schemes caused such a pronounced
technogenic reduction of the Aral Sea that, since 1989, there are really
three discontinuous lakes remaining! The 12th Edition of The Times Comprehensive
Atlas of the World (2007) accurately illustrates this new geographical reality.

"Globalization, as a process of propagating certain influences
on a global scale, actually became apparent in the water sector in the 1950s"
(Dukhovny, 2007). Anthropogenic forcing of our planet's biosphere systems,
intended to be closely examined during the "The International Year of Planet
Earth (2007-2009): Earth Sciences for Society" approved and globally promoted
by the UNO, is likely to confirm that humans exist during an Anthropocene
period of Earth's geological time (Mainguet and Letolle, 1997). It was during
the 1950s that geoscientists finally recognized that humanity's technological
impacts had reached all our planet's lands, even icy Antarctica. AD 1950
is also the reference for 14C dating. With regard to the modern-day diminished
Aral Sea, if it were possible to provide the three lakes with the Central
Asian river runoffs extant during the pre-1960 period, at least 200 years
would be necessary for the Aral Sea to be recreated (Salokhiddinnov and
Khakimov, 2004)! And, of course, the presence of the Aralkum Desert, as
well as vast regions of inefficient mono-culture irrigation agriculture,
has caused remarkable short and long-term meteorological changes in the
various climates of Central Asia (Elguindi and Giorgi, 2007; Shibuo et al.,
2007).

Full restoration of the 1960 Aral Sea through freshwater conservation alone
is unrealistic since such a restrictive consumptive use program would impose
very great economic hardships on the populations of Central Asia's post-1991
independent ecosystem-states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan). (Only Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are riparian.) A reasonable
estimate of the freshwater inflow to the vicinity of the Aralkum Desert
during the 21st century is ~12 km3/y; to restore the Aral Sea
to its circa 1960 size would require a total annual fluid inflow of ~56
km3.

The USA's most qualified Aral Sea-focused geographer, Dr. Philip Micklin,
knowledgably alleges "Of course it is feasible through engineering to bring
water to the Aral Sea from outside Central Asia." In other words, the 20th
century replacement of the seascape with a landscape is not irreversible.
Dr. Micklin, I am certain, was contemplating only 27-30 km3/yr
of freshwater inputs – as from the long-discussed Siberian River Diversions
(Davies et al., 2006; Duke, 2006) and such postulated freshwater transfers
will be impacted by near-term future global climate change (Dobrovolski,
2007; White et al., 2007). Even in the post-USSR 21st century, some Russian
geopoliticians have tried to revive the Siberian River Diversions macroprojects
(Pearce, 2004) to import freshwater from the Ob River and its tributary,
the Irtysh River, to Kazakhstan via a proposed "SibAral Canal Project",
a 2500 kilometer-long, 200 meter-wide, 16 meter-deep concrete-lined canal conveying ~27-30
km3 of freshwater – about 6-7% of the Ob River's yearly
runoff – to Central Asia, overcoming a 110 m-high topographic elevation
in the Turgai Depression at an electrical power cost of ~10.2 billion KW/h.
Disconcertingly, the Ob River's flow is contaminated with unhealthy nuclear
materials and, therefore, its partial transfer would constitute an undesirable
Aral Sea pollution event-process (Kenna and Sayles, 2002)! [A possible catastrophic
flooding looms for the Aral Sea Basin: the AD 1911 Usoi landslide dam in
the Pamir Mountains could fail structurally at any time, suddenly releasing
a flashflood of 17-20 km3 from Lake Sarez in Tajikistan (Schuster
and Alford, 2004). If a controlled release of this freshwater reservoir
were technically arranged and safely performed, then such a carefully planned
freshwater release could jump-start refreshment/dilution of the proposed
"Aral Sea Refill" seawater importation macroproject!]

Aside from Dr. Micklin's geographic projection, however, imported seawater
diluted with all available locally-obtained freshwater would be useful to
the region's inhabitants. Seawater, transported from afar, must be filtered
to remove all harmful biota (Dumont et al, 2004). The best source for seawater
is the nearly tide-less Caspian Sea, lying presently ~27 m below the world-ocean's
level and, approximately, 650 km west of the Aralkum Desert. The best overland
route for a seawater pipeline from the Caspian Sea eastward to the present-day
Aralkum Desert is the abandoned natural Uzboi Channel which, as recently
as 1500 BC, connected the Aral Sea with the Caspian as an Aral Sea peak
flood overflow route (Boomer et al., 2000); Uzboi Channel had a maximum
capacity of ~2000 m3/s owing to channel topography limitations.
Whilst global sea-level rose ~13 cm during the 20th century, the Caspian
Sea rose 13 cm just during the period 1977-1995. Coastal erosion, infrastructure
damage and other macro-problems stimulated by such fluid volume changes
are chronic drags on the economies of the bordering ecosystem-countries.
Dam-building macro-engineers have, so far, been unsuccessful in utilizing
the Garabogaz Aylagy's high overall yearly evaporation as an effective hydrological
regulator of the Caspian Sea's level. And, recent supercomputer modeling
of the Caspian Sea climate "... implies the possibility of several meters
decrease in the [Caspian Sea Level] for the twenty-first century" (Elguindi
and Giorgi, 2007). Hence, a replenishment of the Caspian Sea with filtered
seawater imported from the Black Sea by a ~500 km-long pipeline seems doubly
proper and truly cost-effective in terms of professional macro-engineering!
Integrating the Black Sea-Caspian Sea pipeline plus the Caspian Sea-Aralkum
Desert pipeline would form a combined pipeline system or network that totals
just 1200 km in length, a little more than ~55% the 2200 km length of the
"SibAral Canal Project".

III. Aral Sea Refill Pipeline
Specifications

On 10 June 2007, in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan's President,
Nursultan Nazarbayev, proposed construction of a 650 km-long "Eurasia Canal"
between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The Eurasia Canal could require
3-5 years to build and cost >6 billion USD. As proposed in 2007, the Eurasia
Canal would be 80 m-wide and have a standard vessel navigational depth of
16.5 m; theoretically it should be capable of carrying ships of 3,00 to
10,000 metric tons, allowing cargo delivery schedules of 9-12 days with
a cargo traffic capability more than twice the Volga-Don Canal. In April
2007, the RF President, Vladimir Putin, had publicly proposed an upgrading
of the over-used Volga-Don Canal (completed in 1952) and, on 15 June 2007,
RF First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that Kazakhstan,
Azerbaijan. and Turkmenistan might be disposed to participate in a renewal
of the Volga-Don Canal. President Nazarbayev, however, foresees a separate
Eurasia Canal utilizing the present USSR-era navigable freshwater reservoirs
in the Kuma-Manych Depression of southern RF which would shorten the shipping
route by ~1000 km, transforming landlocked Kazakhstan and all Central Asian
ecosystem-states into maritime nations. This macro-engineering proposal
opens the way for a macroproject speculation related to the "Aral Sea
Refill" seawater pipeline!

Consider a 30 m-diameter textile-reinforced pipe – perhaps of the
kind designed by Willy De Meyer, "Method of on-site production of novel
textile reinforced thermoplastic or thermoset pipes", awarded US Patent
7267141 on 11 September 2007 – which can tolerate pressure to ~100
bars. Such a pipe could be laid upon a methane-inflated or export oil-filled
pad or cradle with low ground pressure on the subaerial soils. Such a combination
would, if broken, spilling volatile fluids and gases, offer some fire-suppression,
possibly even extinguishment, by the simultaneous disgorgement of seawater.
Certainly, the dispersal of inflammable gas and/or petroleum by an on-site
high-pressure salt water spray from a disrupted pipe is predictably beneficial
since the same adversely-affected real estate is quickly treated. Seawater
might be pushed by a "Magnetostrictive Peristaltic Pump", a means
awarded US Patent 6074179, on 13 June 2000 to Gregory R. Jokela and Stanley
A. Black.

To achieve a restoring liquid water flow to the moonscape that is today's
Aralkum Desert of 56 km3/y – 1776 m3/s –
over a distance 650 km within a normal horizontal steel pipe having a constant
30 m-diameter necessitates a seawater velocity of ~2.49 m/s. The pressure
difference needed to drive the seawater flow is ~4.82 bar or, very approximately,
about 1.6 million horsepower. To dilute 56 km3 of seawater of
30 g/L saltiness to brackishness of 10 g/L would require an input of 116
km3 of freshwater. This one-year batch, contributed to the Aralkum
Desert, would become a fluid of 10 g/L saltiness in about 9.7 years. The
circa 1960 Aral Sea had a volume of ~1000 km3 and a salinity
of ~10 g/L. Obviously, a substantial volume of freshwater must be set aside
and allowed to pass downstream in the rejuvenated Amu Darya and Syr Darya
rivers to dilute the saltwater emptied from the importation pipeline onto
the Aralkum Desert. In other words, the "Aral Sea Refill" macroproject induces
good water conservation practices in Central Asia!

References

Davies, B. R. et al., "An assessment of the ecological impacts of inter-basin
water transfers, and their threats to river basin integrity and conservation", Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 2: 325-349
(2006).

Dobrovolski, S. G., "The issue of global warming and changes in the runoff
of Russian rivers", Water Resources 34: 607-618 (2007).

Duke, D. F., "Seizing Favours from Nature: The Rise and Fall of Siberian
River Diversion", pp. 3-34 in Terje Tvedt and Eva Jakobsson (Eds.), A
History of Water: Water Control and River Biographies (I. B. Tauris,
2006) 320 pp.

Kenna, T. C. and Sayles, F. L., "The distribution and history of nuclear
weapons related contamination in sediments from the Ob River, Siberia as
determined by isotopic ratios of plutonium and neptunium", Journal of
Environmental Radioactivity 60: 105-137 (2002). Mainguet, M. and Letolle,
R., "The Ecological Crisis of the Aral Sea Basin in the Frame of a New Time
Scale: The 'Anthropo-Geological Scale'", Natur Wissenschaften 84:
331-339 (1997).

Siegfried, T. and Bernauer, T., "Estimating the performance of international
regulatory regimes: Methodology and empirical application to international
water management in the Naryn/Syr Darya basin", Water Resources Research 43: W11406 (2007).